Lewis Hamilton may have been fastest on Friday in China, but the Briton was clearly far from satisfied with the set-up of his Mercedes.

At one point he told the team “there’s something wrong with this car.” He’d already had suspension issues in the morning session, which saw him run only nine laps.

“It’s not been the easiest of days, but we’ve got this evening to do some work and try and figure out where we are,” he said. “The car can always be better.

“It doesn’t feel spectacular, it’s a lot harder here for some reason than it has been in other places.”

Hamilton admitted that he was frustrated to have run so few laps in the morning session.

“We don’t have many laps as it is, so every lap counts. Usually in P1 you make a set-up change, and go out and test it again when you get fresh tyres, then you do a bit of a longer run on that set. We lost a bit of time, but it’s OK. It’s not the first time.

“You need more laps, more tyres, more opportunities to change the car, so tonight we’ve got to gauge where the track is going to go tomorrow, and hope that we get the balance right. If it rains tomorrow we won’t even know if we’ve made the right change, then you get into the race and find out if you’ve got it right or not.”